eCRATER is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell items without needing to set up your own website. You can create your own personalized store to display your items for sale and make some money. When compared with the best online auction sites, eCRATER falls down in a few key areas. It has a limited userbase which limits how many people will see your items to buy, and has very few customization options due to a lack of HTML or other coding compatibility.
eCRATER does have some things going for it though - it's simple to use and offers a variety of payment options for your convenience. It's also less crowded than other online stores, so while you have a smaller potential audience, it's easier to stand out against the competition.
eCRATER review: Features
When selling through this online auction store, you don't have to worry about paying a bunch of fees. There are no monthly fees to open a store and no costs to verify you as a seller. You also don't have to pay any final value fees unless eCRATER helps you receive a sale through the main marketplace. If this is the case, you will be charged a 2.9 percent fee. This fee is calculated from the final cost the buyer pays for your product. You can choose to opt out of selling through the main marketplace, but this makes you less likely to be noticed by buyers.
There are more than 65,000 users of this service. This definitely isn't the biggest online auction site we evaluated, but it certainly is not the smallest. For a bigger online buying audience, we recommend you sell through eBay which has millions of registered users. When you set up a store using this service, you can have your products fed to Google Shopping to bring in additional traffic and help you sell your products. You can also integrate with Google Analytics to view your traffic and improve your store.
However, there are some limitations to eCRATER. You cannot ship internationally with this service; you must ship within the United States, limiting your potential buyers. eCRATER also does not support HTML or other coding, so customization of your store is minimal. This is a drawback, as customization can help you draw in customers and keep them coming.
Setting up your store is simple. There are icons to help you add products and change your settings. A side menu helps you choose your features and settings, making it easy to set up and get your store rolling. You can also import eBay products into your eCRATER store to save you the time of manually adding products you've already listed there. However, you cannot import your feedback into the store to show buyers you are a trusted seller. If you're selling products across multiple auction sites, or considering doing so, we recommend that you sell through Bonanza because the site makes it easy to manage inventory across multiple sites.
eCRATER review: Payment options and support
Numerous payment options are available through this online auction service. You can accept money from PayPal, direct credit card processing through Stripe, money orders, cashier's and personal checks, and Collect on Delivery, also known as COD.
There are few customer support options available with this service. You can contact representatives via email, but there are no telephone or live chat options. There is a FAQs page on the company website that can answer some of your questions, but it is relatively short.
Should you use eCRATER?
eCRATER is an online auction service that allows you to set up your store for free. There are few fees you have to pay with this service, but it is limited in its capabilities compared to other auction sites. There are no HTML or coding capabilities to make your store stand out, and few customer support options.
Although this service is simple to use, even if this is your first time setting up an online store, its listing options and features fall a bit short. The audience size is also a key limiting factor, as it serves nowhere near as many people as eBay.
